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Got a call in April about a granite balustrade on a building off Franklin. Turn of the century work. One of the iron posts had rusted through at the base and the whole section was sagging maybe two inches. Building owner wanted it replaced. I told him no. The granite was fine. It was the iron shoe that died. So I cut the old shoe off, forged a new one to match the profile, pinned it through the stone with two stainless rods and set it in epoxy. Took two days. Cost him a third of what a replacement run would have. Went back last week to check it. Still dead level. The building's been there since 1928. That repair should outlast both of us. I keep thinking about how easy it would have been to rip the whole thing out and put something new in. That's what everybody does now. Nobody wants to repair anything anymore. But the granite had another hundred years in it. The pattern on that balustrade is not something you order off a catalog. Repair work doesn't get you shows. Nobody writes an essay about the post you saved. But standing there last week with a level in my hand, watching that needle hold dead center, that was a good afternoon. If you're a young fabricator, learn to fix things. Not just make things. There's a trade in it and it'll keep you honest.

Three weeks without the press. Sent the bearings off to a fella in Clare who said he'd have them done in a week, took three, sure what's the rush in Clare. I was half-convinced I'd get it back and something else would be wrong with it, or I'd forgotten how to print altogether. Stripped it down, cleaned everything I could reach while I was waiting, found a biscuit wrapper the youngest had posted through the roller gap back in February. Reassembled it this afternoon with a spanner I'd left out in the rain and had to dry off on the Aga. Pulled the first proof an hour ago. An old block, a hare I've carved so many times I could do it in my sleep. And it just... worked. Clean. Even pressure. The ink laid down like it was glad to be there. I stood there staring at it for longer than I'd admit. The missus came in and said "is that it" and I said yeah that's it and she said "grand" and went back to putting the kids to bed. Which is exactly the right amount of fuss. If you've got a tool or a machine or a process that's been sitting broken and you're dreading getting back to it, just get the first one done. The second one's easy after that.

There's a Miller Syncrowave 250 at the shared shop I work out of some days. Been there twenty years. Last month the high-frequency start started sputtering. Now it's catching about half the time. Rest of the time the arc wanders and you get this weird snake-track bead. I keep asking the guy who runs the place to call a service tech. He says he'll get to it. Meanwhile three of us are just working around it, wasting gas and tungsten, telling ourselves it's fine. It's not fine. A machine that old, you respect it or you replace it. You don't let it limp along getting worse. Anyone else dealing with equipment that needs real maintenance and nobody's stepping up? Or is it just my shop that runs on deferred repair.